I have a friend that regularly sends me “funny” emails (we all have one, don’t we?).
At the bottom of his email, he has the following sig:
UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things,
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.
I think its very clever (and true).
Then I started to think: A similar phrase can be applied to many areas.
eg:
Google won’t stop its employees from doing stupid things,
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.
Of course, some might say the opposite might be true for Microsoft… 
Or with Governments (you might disagree with me on this one):
Australia won’t protect its citizens from doing stupid things (with silly laws),
as that would also stop them from doing clever things.
And I’m sure you will find many countries that push their citizens to mediocrity either via legislation (most of Europe springs to mind), or via the military, or via religious propaganda… or even all of the above.
I wonder if there is a lesson here, that we can all learn from?
Here are some examples of what I mean:
- Pencil cases banned from a primary school in Manchester, in case they hide sharp objects
- Sunscreen banned from a primary shcool in Manchester, due to allergy fears
- Dudley council banns foam floats from pools, in case they hit swimmers
Posted by Computer Help as Musing, Politics at 1:03 PM EST
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This is another of those ‘I wonder why?’ situations:
Having spent some time going to school both in Italy and Australia, I’ve noticed some language peculiarities in the english language, which are puzzling, yet virtually everyone takes for granted.
The one I find most annoying goes like this:
As far as countries are concerned, Italians are from Italy, Turks are from Turkey, Chinese are from China, etc.
As far as continents are concerned, Europeans are from Europe, Africans from Africa, etc.
But this all starts to fall apart when you look at America. ‘Americans’ include Bolivians, Mexicans, Canadians, Brazilians, and that peculiar country between Canada and Mexico
So, logically, if Canadians are from Canada, then who comes from the United States of America?
This is where I love the Italian language. In Italy, they use the word ‘Statunitensi’, which I guess, translates to ‘United Statians’ (or something like that… I’d like to know what is the correct word to describe someone who is from USA)
So its at this point that it gets annoying: if a US ’important person’ make a sweeping statement like ‘we will defend all americans’ or ‘americans will defend timbuktu from terrorists’ then is he also speaking on behalf of the people of Peru, Argentina, etc?
Of course not, but if I was a non-US American, I would take offence at a nation that verbally tries to represent 2 whole continents.
I wonder how this situation came about, since everyone takes it for granted. Some might say ’typical US arrogance’, but its been ongoing for so long that there are probably other reasons (as an Australian, I would believe a certain amount of linguistic laziness is the easiest answer).
Anyway, back to technical talk on the next post!
Posted by Computer Help as Politics, Rant at 3:01 PM EDT
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